


Red Hair

by drawingblinds (breathtaken)



Category: History Boys (2006), History Boys - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-22
Updated: 2007-06-22
Packaged: 2017-12-23 13:54:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/927277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breathtaken/pseuds/drawingblinds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>She used to have red hair;</i> Fiona and Dorothy, in two parts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Hair

She used to have red hair, he found out one day, looking furtively through the nearest photo album while she fetched them drinks (a raised eyebrow when he asked for a beer - another tick in the box of things to upset his parents). _She used to have red hair_ , he thinks, and somehow it has become the kernel of everything that's happened and is happening: 'bread eaten in secret' as he's sure Hector once said, this sweet, covert knowledge in his breast. She used to have red hair, and this window into her youth makes him feel invincible, nobody else mattering. They're just good friends, really, and lots of his schoolmates are still friends with their teachers. The fucking's incidental.

Not that he'll tell them anyway.

He can see the red hair as they talk that evening, and though it would never suit her now, she's too aged and lined, her scarlet youth is in her laugh and the animation in her face as they talk about a film he hated and she quite liked. And he knows that when they make love later he'll see it again, though there's no trace of girlish hang-ups, and fire will spring up where they touch. People might say all kinds of things, he knows, but Akthar isn't bothered because an understanding like this is a rare one, and she used to have red hair, and after all there's nothing they can do.

 

* * *

 

She used to have red hair. Once, anyway. She was fourteen and dyed her scalp through a combination of enthusiasm and first-time bad technique, and had to brush her hair firmly back for a week or so because you could see it in the parting. Her grandmother wouldn't let her go out for two weeks, because she was the sort of old-fashioned woman who didn't understand that this was what fourteen year-old girls did. For some reason, the incident of the red hair has always stuck in her mind, that accidental rebellion that is so far from anything she's been since. Mediocre O-Levels, a secretarial course, and now she's supposed to be an adult, but an adult who still lives at home, whose bedroom is still pink, who isn't even sleeping with Stuart because she doesn't know how to live in the real world.

The red dye sits in her bottom drawer. One day she'll earn it.


End file.
